Embracing Your New Bod.

This part is really f*cking hard and totally different for everyone. Instead of pretending like I know what you went through or are going through, I'll just tell you my experience.

I have always focused on my overall health. I have always worked out. I would never consider myself a gym rat by any means. 20 minutes on my home elliptical and some weights and resistance bands is really all I did, about 4-5 times a week. Throughout my pregnancy, I worked out until 32 weeks, then I just continued walking, then stopped altogether. I am now almost 14 months postpartum and I rarely find even 10 minutes to workout with our crazy schedule. It sucks, and I absolutely wish it were different, but with my husbands hours at work and my exhaustion by end of day and being the sole caregiver most of the time, it just simply doesn't happen. This in itself definitely ways on my mental health. When there are days that I can workout, I feel so happy. They are very few and far between, but I hope as Jack gets older or sleeps later in the morning (LOL wishful thinking) I could get back into some type of routine with that.

The thing about pregnancy, though, is how much it changes every part of your body, and what you can't change back (without plastic surgery of course). I was terrified to get stretch marks. I lubed up my entire body twice a day with Palmers Cocoa Butter in hopes that this would be the trick. Again, wishful thinking. I made it up until 3 days before Jack's birth without a stretch mark on my belly. The day I woke up and saw my tiger stripes, I was devastated. I had worked so hard to prevent these, and here they were anyways. The truth about stretch marks is, it's hereditary and luck whether you get them or not. They suck, but they do fade over time (never completely though).

Being super short, my organs had to move all over my damn body, up my chest to make room for Jack. I am not sure how I was even able to breathe and where they actually were in there by the end. The heartburn was atrocious too. Even postpartum, my organs never fully shifted back to where they were in the first place. They have a new home inside of me. It's kind of crazy to think about, but also cool and makes me appreciate the birth process that much more, that we could survive something as traumatic to our bodies as total shift of our general organs that keep us alive, and live to tell the tale.

When my belly stretched as much as it did in pregnancy, I'm not sure why I thought that it would ever look or feel the same as pre-pregnancy in the first place. This is probably the number one area of my body that I am still trying to even accept postpartum, 14 months later. And my boobs, my poor, poor boobies. They are so very sad and squishy. My ass sags in a very "mom" type of way. All tough things for me to accept. I feel old and washed up. Again, it's really f*cking hard. And different for everyone, for sure. Maybe you have totally embraced your new body, in that case, please share with me how. I would love to know what I'm doing wrong. Every time I sit, my stretched out belly flops in a way it never had before. When I look in the mirror, I hate what I see. I was always hard on myself, but postpartum is truly next level, especially your first go-around.

My saving grace is absolutely my husband, who thinks I am the most beautiful version of myself postpartum, and his own awe at what my body has given to him, the birth of our baby boy. What I try to remind myself when I'm feeling super down on myself, is how amazing and beautiful and magical pregnancy & birth truly is. It's still such a wild concept to me. My tiger-striped, saggy belly stretched and stretched to give me a healthy baby weighing a healthy weight. My sad-looking boobies continue to provide the nutrients my son needs to survive. And, I still haven't found the beauty of my flattened ass, so someone help me out with that one. But the point is-yeah our bodies change. A shit ton. They should after having an entire human (or two or more!!) inside of you for 9-10 months. My hope is that society starts embracing these changes postpartum rather than celebrating the mom who "bounced right back". Let's see how that goes.

xo Courtney